TNAG-2703-FCO40-3909-Memoirs-of-Sir-Percy-Cradock--diplomat-and-sinologist-1993 — Page 6

Kong's growth. Something of a different order was urgently

match the territory's position as a major

needed

to

international

financial, commercial and communications

centre. There had been the usual history of abortive

planning for another site, interrupted by political or

financial crises. It was time for a bold move. A site on

Lantau Island with associated plans for extensive port

facilities was chosen. It was naturally a big project,

worth some £8 billion and extending well beyond 1997. But

the Hong Kong budget could readily carry its share; and some

40% of the money would come from the private sector.

The plan had ample publicity and was spoken of to

Zhou Nan; but the Chinese Government at first expressed no

particular

interest or objection.

They had other

preoccupations at the time. By the end of 1989, however,

there were ominous mutterings from Peking. They related to

cost, fears that the plan might be over-ambitious and, more

relevant, that it could leave the Special/Economic Region

in a weaker financial postion in 1997. We were encountering

a more refined form of Deng Xiaoping's worries in 1984 that

we would deliberately impoverish the territory before

leaving; the airport was seen as the

companies would be

emptied.

means by which British

and Hong Kong's treasury

enriched and

In the Chinese reaction there was no doubt an

element of genuine concern about the burdens that the

undertaking would impose on the Hong Kong Region after

1997. But there was also an instinctive opposition,

enhanced by the post-Tiananmen mood,

any unilateral